I was only sketchily aware of the much-loved radio show on which Round
The Horne... Revisited is based. I'd thought that it was older than
its actual late-1960s period. Had I ever heard it, I would of course have
realised that even for that time, its inventively remorseless way with
double-entendres was pushing it somewhat. At any rate, I entered the bowels
of the Venue off Leicester Square with no great anticipation... unlike
others who plainly found it absolutely bona to vada the dolly eek once
again of characters such as the camp duo Julian and Sandy, with their "Polari"
dialect, or the filthy-sounding but incomprehensible folk singer Rambling
Syd Rumpo.

The radio show's last surviving writer Brian Cooke has stitched a collection
of favourite routines (and a smidgen of new material) into two mock-episodes.
The Venue is done out like the BBC's old Paris Studio where such programmes
were recorded before a live audience; the five performers stand, scripts
in hand, delivering their lines into old-fashioned microphones; there are
red lights to signify supposed recording, and even a sound-effects man
and a sign which lights up to cue applause. Not that it's needed. The audience
gives a cordial reception to all the favourite characters (at this point
it's more or less obligatory to speak of a warm hand on Julian and Sandy's
entrance).

Each of the cast plays one of the original company and all that performer's
radio characters. I'm not in a position to judge accuracy of impersonation,
except in the one case that everyone knows, Kenneth Williams. Robin Sebastian
gets pretty close to Williams' luxuriant braying trumpet of a voice, and
also has the benefit of numerous attention-seeking interjections. Jonathan
Rigby knows, as did Kenneth Horne himself, that the anchor of such a show
must play things as straight as possible; Kate Brown as Betty Marsden pulses
and convulses her lips around every single syllable in a fine example of
what Clive James, after the 1970s TV drama, dubbed "the +Dallas+ twitch".

It's all great fun, and director Michael Kingsbury finds a real chemistry
among his cast. But there's only so far you can go in considering five
people standing behind mics, pretending they're on the radio, to be theatre.
Tickets to the original series were free; prices here start at £15.
If it's worth that much to you, though, you certainly won't be disappointed.